The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) needs to hurry up and release the 2000-odd submissions people made on the Government's proposed $3.5 billion income insurance scheme.
The proposed scheme would make it compulsory for all employees to pay 1.39 per cent of their wages/salaries to the scheme(up to a certain level). This contribution would be matched by their employer.
Someone made redundant or forced to quit their job due to illness would be paid 80 per cent (up to cap) of their previous wage/salary for up to seven months.
If they couldn't find a job in this time, they'd go into the regular welfare system.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson makes the case the scheme would take the pressure off the Government to step in with costly ad-hoc policies to support people in economic downturns. It would also give them the opportunity to retrain or take the time they need to find a suitable job.
Pros and cons of the proposal aside, it's been three months since the consultation closed on April 26, and we still don't know what people think about it. MBIE told the Herald we'll only find out in mid-August.
What's the big deal, you may ask. Government agencies often take time to release submissions, and sometimes only publish them after a policy decision has been made.
Well, the issue is that the Government doesn't yet have a mandate from the public to implement the scheme, which will dramatically change the country's welfare and employment relations systems.
Labour didn't campaign on introducing income insurance ahead of the 2020 election. It didn't include income insurance in its manifesto. Rather, it committed in a tax policy document (linked to its manifesto) to "investigating" such a policy.
The investigation started in February, when MBIE released a discussion document asking the public a range of questions, including whether the scheme was even required.
MBIE said a formal decision on whether the Government would proceed with it would be made in June or early July 2022. But in the same breath, it said substantive legislation to govern the operation of the scheme was intended to be introduced in late 2022 and enacted in around July 2023.
Likewise jumping the gun, Robertson at the May Budget allocated $4 million towards ACC working on operationalising such a scheme. He set aside a further $56.5m in "contingency" funding for 2023-2026.
The least MBIE could do is create a space for debate on the issue by publishing submissions before Robertson announces where to from here with the proposal. This would show the tiniest bit of good faith.
Sure, submissions will eventually be published. But if they're released at the same time as Robertson confirms he will forge ahead with the proposal, submitters' views will be gazumped by the announcement.
Journalists will write about what Person X and Organisation Y thinks about the proposal. But a lot will get lost in the wash. The public will understandably also be more interested in more forward-looking stories about what the scheme will likely look like and how it will work.
People will, in essence, be made to pay for an insurance policy, without having had a proper pitch from a salesperson, and without having had the opportunity to meaningfully partake in a due diligence process.
They will only get this opportunity once legislation to enact the scheme goes through the regular parliamentary process.
One could rightly argue a journalist, so interested in the airing of people's views on policy proposal, should've requested copies of the submissions under the Official Information Act as soon as the deadline lapsed. This is common practice among more judicious folk.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson called on to be a better insurance salesperson. Photo / Marty Melville
Indeed, a spokesperson for the Ombudsman told the Herald, "Agencies to which the Official Information Act apply will often proactively publish public submissions or summaries of them, but there is no standalone obligation for agencies to do so as a matter of course.
"However, successive Ombudsmen have recognised there is a presumption public submissions will be made available on request under the Official Information Act unless 'special circumstances' exist which might cause a particular harm to arise through disclosure."
Andrew Ecclestone, a governance researcher at Victoria University of Wellington, who spent 12 years working as an investigator for the Ombudsman, believes the lack of guidance on how agencies should deal with consultation processes is the problem.
He is of the view a code of practice should be created that mandates how government departments run these processes. This should include guidance on public submissions, which he believes should be released within two weeks of the consultation closing.
"In this day and age, it's unacceptable departments hang on to submissions behind closed doors until ministers have taken policy decisions," Ecclestone told the Herald.
He believes the slow pace at which MBIE is releasing submissions for income insurance is particularly concerning, given the cost and significance of the scheme.
Presumably MBIE and/or Robertson want to avoid months of chatter about the downsides of the proposed income insurance scheme, off the back of critical submissions.
They might prefer to keep things under wraps, ahead of doing a massive document dump in one go. This dump could include a favourably written summary of submissions, which time-poor journalists and members of the public could refer to, rather than trawl through individual submissions.
Robertson will also be wary the scheme would've looked more appealing in 2020, when job losses were a real prospect for so many people. Income insurance would've been particularly reassuring for those with mortgages and dependents.
His sales pitch around creating an automatic stabiliser that would kick in to soften the blow of a downturn would've been compelling.
Schemes like income insurance should of course endure economic ups and downs, but it's harder for Robertson to sell the concept now. The labour market is tight and the last thing those facing rising living costs need is a new "tax" squeezing their budgets.
So, perhaps the climate is such that a more transparent approach would make it harder for Robertson to get his legacy-making scheme across the line.
But other than this being in the interests of the public, openness could build the trust required to get wider-spread support for the proposal. Now, more so than in a while, it would be in Labour's interests to assure people their voices are being heard.
